Anyone give up on swimming to the pace clock and find comfort in just lap swimming for exercise? I have never swam any other way than intervals even after a 20 year layoff.
But I have been on a three month downward spiral. I'm so far out of shape that the couple of workouts I tried were so discouraging that I just want to quit. Yet I swam in a lake last week and felt pretty good. Went to the pool today and intended to just try to swim for 30 minutes straight but damn that clock - swam 6x200 on 4:00. Three months ago I could do 10 on the 3:30 in my sleep and 10 seconds faster per. I just don't want to do this anymore at least not now to even get back to that point. I wouldn't mind just trying to swim a 5k this summer nice and slow instead of competing. I pretty much just need the exercise to lose some weight and be healthy. Yet compteting was what always had motivated me even if it was just against myself and the clock.
So did anyone take this tact and live to tell me how awesome it is? You burn more calories, no more flip turns, no more clock, just swimming.
Whenever I want to keep (some of) the intensity of interval training while not worrying so much about times, I will do odd distances like 175s or funky breathing patterns or off-strokes or use little-used equipment. Anything to avoid comparisons with your "usual" swim speed.
As a kid I hated sets with repeats of weird things like 125 IM and 175 free. Now I enjoy them. I have to pay attention to what I'm doing or I'll lose track, no one else can figure out what I'm doing (it's awesome when other swimmers ask me something like "are you doing... wait, no... what?" before I've even said anything), and I can't compare these sets with anything I did as a kid, college student, or whatever.
Side note: some of the other regular swimmers at my gym got their revenge on me by inventing something called a reverse inside-out IM. From my perspective, it's a broken swim of unknown length with strokes in seemingly random order. I have no idea what they're doing and they make sure it stays that way by coming up with different variations daily. :D
Whenever I want to keep (some of) the intensity of interval training while not worrying so much about times, I will do odd distances like 175s or funky breathing patterns or off-strokes or use little-used equipment. Anything to avoid comparisons with your "usual" swim speed.
As a kid I hated sets with repeats of weird things like 125 IM and 175 free. Now I enjoy them. I have to pay attention to what I'm doing or I'll lose track, no one else can figure out what I'm doing (it's awesome when other swimmers ask me something like "are you doing... wait, no... what?" before I've even said anything), and I can't compare these sets with anything I did as a kid, college student, or whatever.
Side note: some of the other regular swimmers at my gym got their revenge on me by inventing something called a reverse inside-out IM. From my perspective, it's a broken swim of unknown length with strokes in seemingly random order. I have no idea what they're doing and they make sure it stays that way by coming up with different variations daily. :D
